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Aug. 12th, 2011 08:22 pmYuck. Basic programming concept FAIL. Web accessibility FAIL. I was going to sign up for Skype as new instant messenger of choice, because MSN messenger has gone somewhat downhill over the last decade and because you have to be on the IM network your friends use, so off I went to the Skype website to sign up. Filled in all my details (first and last name are required fields, I LIED), put in my desired user name -- "Username Pebblerocker not available." Right, I've never ever seen my username unavailable and am mightily annoyed by the scum-sucker who snagged it, but I'll just put Pebble instead since that's what gaming friends call me. Unticked the "Please spam my provided email address" box, made an attempt at the captcha, submitted the form: page reloads with the message "Please review the details you provided". Nothing obvious to show what's gone wrong; the "Enter username" text above the field is red instead of black, so I figure that must be what's wrong, but nothing's highlighted and there's no message next to it. Tried a variation on username, it appeared to be accepted, no "Username unavailable" message like the first time, so I deciphered the new captcha and tried again. Page reloads, same result. With nothing to go on, I tried a few other things and kept getting the same page reloading with the same "Please review details" message. Five or six bloody captchas I had to put in, none of which were real words. Eventually closed the tab in frustration; I may try getting Skype one day when I'm feeling really mentally resilient, but it's not going to happen tonight.
Obviously they have some way of checking whether a username's available before you submit the form, it rejected Pebblerocker straight off, but then it gave up checking for availability and gave up telling me anything was wrong and left me to guess. Bad design there. Very bad with the new captcha on every attempt. Very bad not having the problem area of the form highlighted so I could go straight to that and change the problem input. I have a lot of problems signing up for new services; there's a lot of very bad form design out there and there are heaps I've been completely unable to fill out because there IS NO ANSWER to the questions they're asking. Photobucket, for example: I was going to sign up for that and didn't because I couldn't answer which US state I live in. Going in with the intention of filling out sensible information that the service could plausibly require (username, password, email) takes a different mindset to going in and making shit up and lying about questions that don't even apply. Lying about my real name isn't the same thing; I consider that to be information nobody on the internet EVER has the right to know and if they ask for it they're going to get Pebblerocker Pebblerocker and they'll just have to suck on it.
Huh -- I wonder if my Skype thing was rejected because I didn't choose a gender? There was nothing to say that that was why it didn't go through or that it was a required field -- but there was nothing to say it wasn't.
As a person who just uses the damn internet from time to time I reckon I have a far better grasp of web accessibility and usability than anyone who actually gets paid to do it.
Obviously they have some way of checking whether a username's available before you submit the form, it rejected Pebblerocker straight off, but then it gave up checking for availability and gave up telling me anything was wrong and left me to guess. Bad design there. Very bad with the new captcha on every attempt. Very bad not having the problem area of the form highlighted so I could go straight to that and change the problem input. I have a lot of problems signing up for new services; there's a lot of very bad form design out there and there are heaps I've been completely unable to fill out because there IS NO ANSWER to the questions they're asking. Photobucket, for example: I was going to sign up for that and didn't because I couldn't answer which US state I live in. Going in with the intention of filling out sensible information that the service could plausibly require (username, password, email) takes a different mindset to going in and making shit up and lying about questions that don't even apply. Lying about my real name isn't the same thing; I consider that to be information nobody on the internet EVER has the right to know and if they ask for it they're going to get Pebblerocker Pebblerocker and they'll just have to suck on it.
Huh -- I wonder if my Skype thing was rejected because I didn't choose a gender? There was nothing to say that that was why it didn't go through or that it was a required field -- but there was nothing to say it wasn't.
As a person who just uses the damn internet from time to time I reckon I have a far better grasp of web accessibility and usability than anyone who actually gets paid to do it.
